Cartography and Digital Technologies: New Literacies in Geography Teaching (?)

Abstract

The present research project is linked to the Departamento de Geografia, Instituto de Geociências, at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) and its main objectives are: to contribute to the understanding of the new literacies associated with digital mapping, support the creation of a study group on the subject and connect research and teaching in the education of geography teachers. Therefore, we propose to develop a qualitative study, focusing on the practices of students attending a licentiate degree in geography at the institute. The practices that we seek to investigate are related to processes, knowledge and meanings involved in the interaction of students and the mapping made possible by digital technologies. Cartography engendered by new technologies have been shown to promote creative discontinuities in the world of maps and, consequently, in our understandings of space. Especially with regard to changes in their modes of production and representation, and in their modes and contexts of use, the maps that now circulate in cyberspace point to new ways of relating, thinking and conceiving the geographic space. Understanding the place that this new cartography can take in cartographic and geographic education is not an easy task and requires the formulation of new issues and strategies to investigate them. Drawing on researches about the relation between new literacies and digital technology, the purpose of this project is to provide the theoretical, empirical and methodological knowledge necessary to comprehend the possibilities and requirements that new forms of communication and interaction involved in many kinds of digital texts, including maps, bring to education and teaching nowadays. (AU)